The Influence

Photo Credit: Valentino

Fall/Winter 2015-16 marks the last main season lacking a New York Fashion week: Men’s. The French and Italian houses’ Bordeaux brushed, neo-seventies styles toast British designers, famous for bending binary lines and breaking creative constructs. Though the CFDA announced New York Fashion Week: Men’s after designers conceptualized their winter wears for European runways, all knew London’s male-fashion ownership faced American sportswear dilution. At it’s July debut, critics slapped a “far less adventurous” than London label on New York Men’s Spring 2016 catwalks. Still, Brittan’s safety is not guaranteed.

Critics consider fashion synonymous with inventive clothing. Though by fashion’s definition, clothing is designer created and fashion is buyer determined. Europe’s peacock pieces, months separated from men’s market week, must face different analysis than American shows attempting merchant-readiness on the runway. Fashion is mass-accepted clothing, what the bloggers with far wider reaches than traditional critics buzz about. New York fashion has no time to trickle down, so with wearability it eliminates the process. As designers trend to distinctiveness, years could take American’s away from adapting European designs. And with that, Europe holds less ties to the clothing appropriated, the fashion.

Photo Credit: Coach

Because the winter European shows walked in the interim of customers wanting instant access and spring 2016s instantaneous fashion system, runway items look more whimsical than wearable even in the season they should live. Specialty stores made less use of styles needing trickle-down, like Loewe and J.W. Anderson’s androgynous designs.

Photo Credit: Loewe

Express, and Hugo boss took passes at touching Europe’s most prevalent runway trends. Burberry and Fendi’s full shearlings and Paul Smith and Dunhill’s full furs found no fits in their edits. J. Crew and Club Monaco successfully added fleecy shearling collars to casual coats like wool bombers, though it was far from being the center of their designs.

Photo Credit: Fendi

Merchants instead bought great volumes of the few details they could pull right off the runways. Roll collars, patchworks and plaids, looser-fit pants, sweaters, leather, and longer-line coats crowd store windows. Despite runways of rich, wine-colors and light-catching suits seen in Valentino and Alexander McQueen’s collections, ready-to-wear takes rugged vibe. General uses of texture and baggier fits were two of the few details that trickled-down, which when done in less grand materials and silhouettes, have leisure-like feel. Because men still need some workplace sleekness, buyers held onto a cool-undertone palettes, bringing dominance and distance to warmer silhouettes and textures. Browns, burgundy, and olive touches are more accent than centerpieces in the shop collections.

The Image

Photo Credit: Club Monaco

Photo Credit: J.Crew

Casual shirts in plaids, donegals, chambrays, and horizontal stripes are the new closet staple. Men can purchase them oversized, to throw them on partially-buttoned and untucked over tight turtleneck t-shirts. Selvedge jeans cuffed right above the shoe’s top or slim-straight cuts with no break mute the more adventurous apparel.

Photo Credit: Brooks Brothers

For a classic look, men can style the same casual shirt under a blazer of similar undertones. They reference the season’s casualty by forgetting the tie altogether, or choosing a tie in textures or flannel-like patterns. A wool pocket square creates the same warmth. Wearing the tops with trousers in contrasting undertones or jeans also draws on a leisurely style.

Photo Credit: Express

For the mall or a movie, the casual shirt-blazer partnership can be put with slim sweat pants. It also looks comfy under a tight zip-hoodie and layered under a shrunken leather jacket. Tennis shoes in heather grey and taupe canvas colors, or a white matte leather, dominate as casual footwear this season.

Photo Credit: Club Monaco

In a more professional workplace, men can wear the classic blazer over a turtleneck sweater, or plain dress shirt with a textured tie. Prints and textures are reserved for the blazer and tie, rather than the dress shirt. The shirt adds balance to a bulky-knit a button down or Henley sweater. Ties can tuck into sweaters or shirt collars can be left more unbuttoned when men choose to go without a tie.

Photo Credit: Club Monaco

Fall’s trousers have a creases and are cut to fall straight or taper minimally in from the thigh, ending in either one break or none. Dress shoes are laced in boot or oxford styles of dark, matte leathers. Accessories like wool scarfs and wool-Donegal baseball caps add newness to seen-before styles. Jewelry and watches are a mix of brass and leather. The leather wallet gets an update when tweed crafts its center-front.

A Nordic parka or wool or tweed jacket in car, topcoat, bomber, or pea coat shapes are perfect clothing companions for colder days. A gritty fleece pullover recalls this season’s runway shearling without bordering into the too trendy to wear comfortably zone.

Photo Credit: J. Crew

In short, the fashion leans to the casual side with strong Scandinavian influences. Though rough and masculine, the textures and less-crisp shapes lend the look approachability and ease rather than distance. This is a much softer season for men; their style friendly, warm, and wise. Where the runway toasted Brittan, the shops created a pub scene. Like merriness makes a drink, it too makes a fashion.

Ashley Mattei.

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Feel the weight of what you’re wearing? It puts print’s dimensionality to shame, sends more sensory communication than color; texture is taking over as fashion’s favorite detail. Forecasters can trace Fendi’s cozy-furs and Chanel’s frayed tweeds to last winter’s chill. But as fringe falls into the spring and summery plumes make pattern and pallet second-thoughts to touchable constructs, trend analyzers attribute texture’s reason to more than a Polar Vortex response. While fashion follows customer desires, and favoring high-feel apparel is appropriate for the physically intangible time we inhabit–all creative products trapped behind our smart-phone screens– it’s no coincidence luxury companies are facilitating the fashion with fury. Carrying construction complexity, touches that can’t be copied through savvy patterning because they come straight from the textile, these textured times could steal some of fast-fashion’s force.

Oscar de La Renta, considered “the last of the generation of bold tastemakers,” lost an eight-year battle with cancer at the age of 82. The man known for feminine elegance and Parisian extravagance, differentiated by a touch of Latin charisma, died Monday evening in his Kent, Connecticut home. Despite mid-priced luxury’s cannibalization of soft luxury sales, de la Renta’s privately-held brand grew fifty percent in the last eight years. During that time his fashions, favored by dated but revenue-driving ladies-who-lunch, simultaneously landed on “current” celebrities including Amal Clooney, Amy Adams, and Sarah Jessica Parker. De la Renta’s focus on occasion-dressing distinguished his brand from his inaccessible-couture competitors, yet built a formality above the ready-to-wear runways. His dresses showed up at State Dinners and on red carpets alike, for wearers who valued balancing status with being relatable. Their publicity built the “iconic” American association for his designs, which later drove demand in label-loving, East-markets.

That’s a wrap!–a must-wear wrap–all the bohemian of blanket dressing, but finished with contrast piping for perfect structure. The pre-season’s not too preemptive for trend evolutions, and designer Clare Waight decided her Chloé girl controls the pack. The plan: to swing summer’s Mediterranean flare into the chilly months.

Remember composition notebooks, their binders broken from jotting nightly journal entries? Tips of photographs show past the edges, glue seeping from their sides, sticking the scrapbook shut. Slide a finger between two pages, wilted with weight; hear a pull as they pry apart. Taste dust on the tongue; air thick with a Sharpie’s smell. Creativity’s product captures all senses.

“Oh Bardot!” the beatnik in Rachel Zoe’s show goes, but the tweeds and dogstooths, those were more Jackie-O. The “French ingenious” found in bateau stripes, cropped pants, and polo necks prompted Zoe’s swing through the sixties. Though, she didn’t start and part in Paris. Pleated minis and menswear tailoring tackled London’s youthquake, while suede bell bottoms, baby-doll dresses, and fringe tops fit the decade’s foxy finish.

Christopher Bailey knows British customers—the London lady’s love of a high-brow, high street, and hand-made mix make his Burberry bases. For fall, he hit the latter heavy, pulling William Morris-esque prints, baroque appliques, and dense jacquards from the 19th century arts and crafts movement.

If minimal is in, designer Frida Giannini missed the memo. Or rather, she didn’t need it–the Gucci girl, by definition, never does simple–she goes glam.
So perhaps Giannini’s attempt to “materialize the essence of Gucci” is a modest minimal for Gucci’s girl. The brand’s past paraded the runway, quenching Giannini’s “longing for clean lines and precision.” A sixties, swinging London style was her fix: from A-lines to mod-dresses, a sharp edge structured every silhouette.